Localgiving.com to handle online donations to small charities
Howard Lake | 2 November 2010 | News
Small, local charities are set to benefit from online giving website Localgiving.com which launched yesterday.
Founded by dotcom entrepreneur Marcelle Speller in 2008, Localgiving.com provides an opportunity for organisations too small to be registered with the Charity Commission to create an online presence through which members of the public can find and fund small community projects in their local areas.
Charities with annual incomes of less than £5,000 are not required to be registered by the Charity Commission.
Localgiving.com is a social enterprise owned equally by the Community Foundation Network and the Ardbrack Foundation.
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All charities featured on Localgiving.com are independently vetted by their local Community Foundation, in a process that Localgiving.com says is approved by the Charity Commission.
An annual listing on the site, which includes the vetting process and full access to the fundraising and donation tools, costs £60. The site offers an online donation service with automated Gift Aid processing, as well as email marketing tools.
Marcelle Speller, Founder and Chief Executive of Localgiving.com said: “Small local charities provide a unique and invaluable service to their communities. Localgiving.com enables everyone to find the small charities that address the issues they care about in their community and provide them with support – it could even help them survive”.
Matthew Bowcock, Chair of the Community Foundation Network, said: “We strongly believe in the importance of building resilient communities that can effect change at a local level and we welcome the valuable contribution which Localgiving.com will make to this effort. The website provides a platform for charitable groups to fundraise online and also a much needed guide for members of the public to find them.
“All too often, the hard work being done by these groups or individuals is unknown outside of their immediate network. Now is the time for them to take a much more prominent role in the communities which they serve.”
Marcelle Speller has held various Director and Board level marketing positions with multinational companies including American Express, Avis, Heineken and Inter-Continental Hotels. In 1996 she co-founded Holiday-Rentals.com which became Europe’s leading website for advertising private holiday homes. The company was sold to Homeaway Inc in 2005. In 2007/8 Marcelle attended the Institute for Philanthropy’s Philanthropy Workshop, which gave her the inspiration to found Localgiving.com.
She appeared on 31 October 2010 on Channel 4’s Secret Millionaire.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.